Ski touring the Canadian Rocky Mountains

This was spring 2012, we started in Yoho national park, then into Assiniboine Provincial park before heading into Banff and finally up to Jasper. The national parks in winter are stunning. The icefields parkway opens up hundreds of day tours easily accessible from the road. On the longer tours we made use of a number of cosy cabins such as Egypt lake in the picture below and the Hilda Youth hostel on the icefields parkway. In spring we thought we would be safe from bears but the first trip involved us following bear, cougar and wolf prints in the snow. With record breaking snowfall a lot of lower elevation routes were much more accessible these are some pictures below;

A sweet couloir down onto Egypt Lake

Eygpt lake shelter under descent covering of snow. This is fairly big shelter when uncovered!

This was part of our tour into Yoho and Mt Assiniboine parks. In this shot we camped in a bit of a storm at about 2400m, We found some trees for shelter and then in the morning it cleared up to reveal about 6 inches of fresh snow and amazing views

View of Mt Assiniboine with its hat on!

View down into Yoho national park

Circumzenithal arcs are caused by ice crystals rather than water, either way this was pretty crazy. From a different angle the lower arc had ‘Sundogs’ which is when there are 3 suns, one in the middle and one either side.